5/20/2013
I haven't updated this for a few years, except for my PAX photos.
Things have been busy! I left the Advanced Technology Group in Xbox
around 2012, and joined 343 Industries making Halo. I spent five years
architecting bleeding-edge petabyte-scale data gathering components
to make our future games (and others across Microsoft) even more amazing.
Now I've switched gears and am a Sr. Data & Applied Scientist at 343 Industries. :)

I've had this domain for a while now, and I've
tossed in random pages and projects whenever I needed to share something with
the world. Around 2005, I created a home page to consolidate things.
Below are different things, sometimes nothing more than a page with
links to images, in chronological order.

Naturally, everything here reflects my own opinions and not those of my employer.

I've been working on Photogrammetry reconstruction of the booths at PAX, now that Photosynth has shut down. It's taken some time to get a good workflow going, and I'm still learning the various tools for simplifying and repairing the meshes... but I did want to share the first good model that I've created. :)

In September, I attended the lucky-13th Penny ArcadeExposition
. This year was a good one. I took a mere 6,600 photos... for I was distracted by being an Omeganaut! It was a great experience. :)

I'm still working on creating a virtual-reality destination, my system crashed right as I was ready to upload last year's, wiping out the work. This is doubly important, as apparently Photosynth was taken offline. :(

But, for mundane experiences: The top 1,600 photos can be found here.
On Flickr, you can view the best 850 here .

For more immersive experiences, I grabbed a few 360 videos, and some big panoramas. Thanks again for making this possible Mike, Travis, and Dave!

In September, I attended the twelfth annualPenny ArcadeExposition
. This year was excellent! I took a record 9,400 photos. It was, as usual, amazing. :)

I'm working on creating a virtual-reality destination (one realon why there were so many photos this year), we'll see if it works!

Photosynths, in which you can navigate the photos in 3D space, can be found here. The top 1,400 photos can be found here.
On Flickr, you can view the best 990 here . Thanks again for making this possible Mike!

In August, I attended the eleventh annualPenny ArcadeExposition
. This year was excellent! I took over 5,800 photos, created several panoramas and many photosynths, walked 23 miles with around 30lbs of gear. It was amazing. :)Large Panoramas and Amazing Photosynths are hosted on Photosynth. The top 1300 more interesting photos can be found here.
On Flickr, you can view the best 1,000 here . Thanks again for making this possible Robert!

In August, I attended the tenth annualPenny ArcadeExposition
. This year was excellent! I took over 4,100 photos, created several panoramas and photosynths, and had a blast.Large Panoramas and Amazing Photosynths are hosted on Photosynth. The top 1250 more interesting photos can be found here.
On Flickr, you can view the best 640 here . Thanks again for the hookup Robert!

In August, I attended the ninth annualPenny ArcadeExposition
. This year was amazing, as usual... and even bigger than before!
Table-top, PC, console gaming, card games, miniatures... everyone was well represented. I took over 7500 photos, created several panoramas and photosynths, and had a blast.Large Panoramas and Amazing Photosynths are hosted on Photosynth. The top 1200 more interesting photos can be found here.
On Flickr, you can view the best 680 here . Thanks again for the hookup Robert!

In August, I attended the eighth annualPenny ArcadeExposition
. This year was amazing, as usual... and even bigger than before!
Table-top, PC, console gaming, card games, miniatures... everyone was well represented. I took over 5400 photos, created several panoramas and photosynths, and had a blast.Large Panoramas and Amazing Photosynths are hosted on Photosynth. The top 1200 more interesting photos can be found here.
On Flickr, you can view the best 510 here . Thanks again for the hookup Robert!

In August, I attended the seventh annualPenny ArcadeExposition
. This is a gaming conference
like no other, giving equal dues to table-top, PC, and console gaming.
This topped all previous years with nearly 69,000 attendees, as they rented the entire Seattle Convention Center for three days. I took over 5800
pictures, created several panoramas and photosynths, and had a blast.Large Panoramas and Amazing Photosynths are hosted on Photosynth. The top 1200 more interesting photos can be found here.
On Flickr, you can view the best 550 here . Thanks again for the hookup Robert!

In September, I attended the seventh annualPenny ArcadeExposition
. This is a gaming conference
like no other, giving equal dues to table-top, PC, and console gaming.
This topped all previous years with nearly 67,600 attendees, as they rented the entire Seattle Convention Center for three days. I took over 5800
pictures, created several panoramas and photosynths, and had a blast.Large Panoramas and Amazing Photosynths are on this site, as well as the top 1400 more interesting photos here.
On Flickr, you can view the best 700 here . Thanks again for the hookup Robert!

In September, I attended the sixth Penny ArcadeExposition
. This is a gaming conference
like no other, giving equal dues to table-top, PC, and console gaming.
This topped all previous years with nearly 61,000 attendees, as they rented the entire Seattle Convention Center for three days. I took over 5500
pictures, created several panoramas and photosynths, and had a blast.Large Panoramas are on this site, as well as the 2000 more interesting photos here.
On Flickr, you can view the best 1000 here .
The Photosynths (they came out AMAZING) can be seen here.
Thanks for the hookup Robert!

In August, I attended the fifth Penny ArcadeExposition
. This is a gaming conference
like no other, giving equal dues to table-top, PC, and console gaming.
This topped all previous years with over 55,000 attendees, and I took over 6500
pictures over three days, created multiple panoramas, and had a blast.
I also had a chance to experiment with some Photosynths! Large Panoramas are on this site, as well as the 2000 more interesting photos here.
On Flickr, you can view the best 800 here .
The Photosynths (they came out AMAZING) can be seen here.
Thanks for the hookup Robert!

One of the side projects I'm currently working on. Downloads
every scrap of data off the bungie website, caching it on the hard drive and in
an Access database. The UI provides reporting capabilities. The
Access database is normalized. Supports RSS export, copy to Excel, and report graphs saved as JPGs.

While not currently documented, custom reports can be created by you and shared with others.

In August, I attended the fourth Penny Arcade Expo. While there, I took a lot of photos, including over a hundred of the Big Daddy statue and the Scarab HeroClix figure.

I wanted to create a more interactive method for viewing these photos, so I spent a few hours this weekend and whipped something together. I wish it was better, but I don't have much time for fun side projects like this. :)
Check it out here!

In August, I attended the fourth Penny ArcadeExposition
. This is a gaming conference
like no other, giving equal dues to table-top, PC, and console gaming.
This year there were 40,000 attendees, and I took over 3500
pictures over three days, created multiple panoramas, and had a blast.

Large Panoramas are on this site, as well as the 2000 more interesting photos here.
On Flickr, you can view the best 550 here , or you can view a more limited set of 170 here. Thanks for the hookup Robert!

One of the side projects I'm currently working on. Downloads
every scrap of data off the bungie website, caching it on the hard drive and in
an Access database. The UI provides reporting and game-review capabilities. The
Access database is normalized (with an exception to simplify Bungie
synchronization). Supports RSS export, CSV export (works with included Excel
spreadsheet), and report export as JPGs.

What started out as a console application to learn C# over
Christmas break has turned into over 7000-lines of functional code.

In August, I attended the third Penny ArcadeExposition
. This is a gaming conference
like no other, giving equal dues to table-top, PC, and console gaming. I took 2500
pictures over three days, created multiple panoramas, and had a blast.

I'm working off & on on a top-down asteroids
multiplayer clone for the 21st century. Using C# and DirectX9, I'm aiming to
create a large-multiplayer fast-paced experience. The real twist that I'm
adding to the genre is a realistic physics engine that simulates gravity fields
(the red gradient you see to the left). The asteroids pull the projectile
weapons, and the ships, in a realistic fashion. I've only spent a few weeks of
evenings, but so far I've put together the rendering pipeline, physics engine,
and collision detection.

A 1-day
Virtual Earth mashup
(10/2005)

We're having a Virtual Earth mashup contest at
work, so I thought I'd dust off the ASP server do something with it. Search for
Seattle-area (King County) restaurants/food providers, and get back their
latest inspection results.

Temporarily down due to breaking changes in the VE API.

Exchange Explorer [
Exchange
Folder & Mail Size Treemapper
] (2/2005)

In an email group at work a long conversation thread
started, concerning the various methods of visualizing free space on
the hard drive (the best mentioned, IMHO was
Space Monger
). The primary method used a concept of
treemaps
.

Anyways, during the discussion, someone lamented that there
needed to be one written for Outlook. That evening I combined a few samples out
on the web (ZAML & C# for
treemapping concepts, a
newsgroup post
for .Net/MAPI integration ideas) to create a C#
treemapping control that analyzed a given mailbox. Works quite well to identify
those folders that you have forgotten, but that a rule is secretly populating
with a highly-trafficed alias.

Watermarking control (2/2005)

During this time, I was on the prowl for small applications I
could write to keep my skills sharp, which would also fill someone's need. A
researcher at work needed to put on a presentation/give people their code, but
wanted to convey that it was still a secret project.
A
few methods were discussed in the thread, and I put together an example of one
of them.

You drop this container control on your designer, then put in
your normal controls. The watermark text is automatically applied to every
control. This implementation uses a number of Win32 APIs to handle WM_PAINT and
calculate/redraw clipped regions. .Net's fun, but sometimes you have to go
old-school. ;-)

In August, I attended the second Penny ArcadeExposition
. This is a gaming
conference like no other, giving equal dues to table-top, PC, and console
gaming. I took 1500 pictures, created multiple panoramas, and had even more fun
than last year's.

I had the opportunity to participate in the early betas of Savage
,
a unique game that offered two players out of 32 the opportunity to be the
commander of an RTS, and the other 30 players a FPS experience following the
commander's orders in human vs beast battle. During the beta, I decided to do a
VB.NET "hello world" that would create random maps that were symmetrical
(so no one side would have an advantage).

Reverse engineering the file format was half the fun, and the
developers responded encouragingly to a few inquiries. I was able to create
random maps that would take an hour or more to traverse. With my fractal noise
generator, I created quite interesting maps, with packs of animals, realistic
distribution of trees in grove-like fashion, and a path with waypoints
connecting the bases (using a modified A* algorithm to ensure that both sides
could reach each other).

The link is to a few screen shots taken while I was working on
it. In the end, the developers didn't have time to address a few bugs in the
map format, and I didn't have time figure out a workaround. But the maps
were... amazing.

I had never been to a full-blown Anime convention
before, and it was definitely a different experience.
Sakuracon
is a Pacific
Northwest conference devoted to Japanese animation. I mainly went to see Penny
Arcade (this was the year before PAX began), but was treated to quite the
visual experience.

Well, this one was a bit embarrassing. I was
playing the XBox, jumped up to pop dinner in the oven, and hit the timer button
on the microwave to let me know when it was done. Except in my distracted haste
to get back to the game I hit Cook instead of Kitchen Timer. Coupled with an
unknown problem (a belt had broken, focusing all microwave energy at one
point), the door burst into flame.

The secret-at-the-time feature that I was beta testing was actually the beta
version of XBox Live itself.